Thermalright Silver Arrow CPU Cooler Review by VR-ZONE.com

[siopao1984]

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Thermalright Silver Arrow CPU Cooler Review - Dual 140mm of Air Cooling Greatness by VR-Zone.com

We at VR-Zone test many combinations of motherboards and CPU platforms throughout the year, often demanding quick assembly/disassembly of heatsinks and decent air cooling performance in order to maximize overclocks in the shortest possible time. One CPU cooler (among many on our shelves) that we prefer to use in particular, is the Thermalright Silver Arrow.

Introduction

Quick run through of the greatest hits from Thermalright - SK-6, SLK-900, SP-94/97, Ultra-90, Ultra-120 Extreme, Venomous X, AXP-140, HR02, Archon (review coming soon).





Unpacking the contents of the box, we have:

• the Silver Arrow heatsink,
• two TY-140 fans,
• a few installation leaflets, and
• a sealed accessories pack which includes the mounting kit and fan clips.

Measuring 147mm x 122.6mm x 162mm (L x B x H), the Silver Arrow takes up a huge amount of real estate.

[siopao1984]

A Closer look at the Silver Arrow

High Fin Density - Each tower has 147 x 103mm of surface area for heat dissipation



4 X 8mm large sintered heat-pipes



Nickel Plated Base and Heatpipes, increase the longevity of the heatsink by slowing oxidation and deterioration rates… maintained performance over time.



Mirrored and Lapped Finish



Thermalright's own TY140 Fan (160 x 140 x 25mm) rated at 0.2A

[siopao1984]

Comparing against Noctua's NH-D14

Personally, we liked the previous king of the hill - the Noctua NH-D14. One of our gripes about it was the vicious "cheese grater" fin design which always shaved off skin and blood during extended periods of handling.

Both Coolers with Rubber Gromets to minimize fan vibration







8 heatpipes (Silver Arrow) vs 12 heatpipes (NH-D14)

[siopao1984]

Installation

The mounting solution is identical to the Venomous X design which is hassle-free and uncomplicated - No PHD in Engineering needed









Torque wrench for increasing the mounting pressure



And there you have it, the Thermalright Silver Arrow installed on an ASUS SABERTOOTH X58 motherboard.



There are four pairs of fan clip insertion holes for you to play around with airflow direction and fan positioning.

While the included TY-140 fans have mounting holes similar to those on 120mm fans, the very same fan clips can be used on full-sized (square-shaped) 140mm fans.





There is some space between the two towers; apart from air being drawn directly from the airflow path of the first fan, fresh (and cool) air is drawn in at the same time, into the second tower.

In fact, a 38mm thick fan fits nicely in the gap between the two towers. The Silver Arrow would probably make a very sick air cooling solution with three 38mm fans.



The problem with all huge tower heatsinks, especially those with twin tower designs, is that in a typical orientation with air being exhausted towards the motherboard's rear I/O, you simply cannot use high-performance memory with tall heatsinks.

In the case of the Silver Arrow, the first two channels on our X58 motherboard are 'blocked' by the front fan.

A way to fix this 'problem' is to have air drawn in from the rear of your casing, through the heatsink, and then exhausted towards your memory - which will not be obstructed in this orientation. Another alternative is to adopt a 'pull' fan configuration, although 'push' would yield better cooling results.

[siopao1984]

Test setup and performance results

Our test setup consists of the following components:

Intel Core i7-965 Processor Extreme Edition
ASUS Rampage III GENE (Intel X5
6GB (3 x 2GB) DDR3 memory in tri-channel
CoolerMaster Silent Pro M1000 PSU
Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB HDD
Gainward GeForce GTS 450 Golden Sample GLH 1GB
Dell UltraSharp 3007WFP LCD
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

Prolimatech Armageddon + dual Thermalright X-Silent 140
Noctua NH-D14 + Noctua NF-P12 and NF-P14 FLX
Thermalright Silver Arrow + dual Thermalright TY-140

We have used IntelBurnTest, an extremely stressful program that utilizes the LINPACK library to load our i7-965 Extreme Edition. While generally used to test for system stability, this tool can also be used to achieve maximum processor temperature under 100% load.

All available memory was dedicated to IntelBurnTest, eight threads were executed, and the program was set to loop 10 times. The load time is approximately half an hour to 45 minutes depending on the processor's frequency. The system was then left to idle for about 15 minutes after IntelBurnTest has completed. Temperatures were logged via a software monitoring utility. Ambient temperature was 26°C.


The three heatsinks were first tested with our Core i7-965 Extreme Edition operating at its default frequency of 3.2GHz.



Thermalright's Silver Arrow wasted no time to distinguish itself from the pack with an average load temperature of 55°C across all cores. The Noctua and Prolimatech heatsinks recorded average load temperatures of 60°C and 58°C respectively.



The Silver Arrow idles 3°C lower than the NH-D14. The low-speed Armageddon setup trails slightly behind the two twin tower heatsinks.

Next, we overclocked our processor to about 3.83GHz (166MHz x 23) at 1.375V Vcore, with Loadline Calibration enabled. Without LLC, we would need slightly over 1.4V for stability.



Under load, the Core i7-965 was about 2°C cooler with the NH-D14 as compared to the Armageddon setup. However, the Silver Arrow comes along an outperforms the NH-D14 and Armageddon by a pretty big 4°C and 6°C margin respectively.



Very low idling temperatures with the Silver Arrow too. We were getting an average of 41°C to the NH-D14's 42°C.

Very impressive performance from Thermalright's latest heatsink.

[siopao1984]

Conclusion



We will be releasing another review about the much vaunted Thermalright Archon soon. But as far as dual tower heatsinks and Air Cooling go, the Thermaltake Silver Arrow is the best Air Cooling Solution for overclockers.

[street_of_no_return]

....awesome

[brackitz]

Wow!

but grabeha... bsin di na hinuon mu andar ang cpu ana ky na freeze na sa tumang ka bugnaw. hahaha

[dhekoy33]

nndota kaayo ni na cpu cooler....

[zarcon.phut1986]

how much would this cost?